Managed Cloud anything but hair-raising

ghd, otherwise known as Good Hair Day, sells its products in a number of salons and stores across the world, while operating its own busy website. The company is currently migrating its IT infrastructure to Rackspace’s new UK data centre in Crawley, Sussex, which is allowing them access to a better solution while keeping their IT cost neutral. This has been achieved by moving test and development to sit with production so that all of ghd’s hosting will be on a VMware Private Cloud backed by Fanatical Support® from Rackspace.

Having this top class technical solution is one thing, but ghd’s Internet Technical Solutions Manager, Spencer Hudson, says there’s more to the cloud than that. “The decision to work with Rackspace is influenced more by people than technology. I’m part of a lean team, and as a result we have always worked closely with a third party that could maintain our IT infrastructure. Building relationships with Rackspace’s external team is incredibly important as it gives me peace of mind that the traffic spikes caused by our extremely seasonal business will be handled, and costly downtime avoided.”

Seasonal spikes are a key factor for ghd. During busier periods, the company uses load balancers that distribute workloads across multiple servers and resources. Their hybrid solution also uses RackConnect® too, which combines dedicated servers with a public cloud, mixing high-performance plus increased security with the ability to burst when traffic peaks.

In addition to site resiliency, performance is another important part of ensuring customers have a great experience when making purchases. Moving to Rackspace managed cloud in the Crawley data centre will shift ghd’s infrastructure to more modern servers and further enhance security via a Web Application Firewall (WAF), which delivers an extra line of defense between servers and a traditional firewall. The hair specialist will also use a Hybris platform to support its busy B2B sales channel, which handles orders from salons across the world.

ghd currently uses a hybrid solution, with its test and development taking place on a Rackspace Public Cloud and its production sitting on a VMware Private Cloud. Darren Norfolk, Managing Director of Rackspace UK, said: “It’s really satisfying to see how our support is helping ghd focus its time and energy on selling products and running the businesses rather than keeping their website up and running.”